book notes #12: cutting

As I previously mentioned, I have been hard at work on the second edit of my book.  I’ve made a lot of progress since the new year.  I’ve found doing a little bit at a time really does add up to large chunks of accomplishment.  It feels good to look at my Post-it bookmark and see it slowly but surely (and consistently) moving toward the end of my black binder.

Last month, I read a memoir about a young woman who tried to get published and all the hurdles she tripped over to get there.  She had a bad time of it with allegedly bad agents and she even turned down Penguin because they tried to change too much of her work and she didn’t feel good about moving forward with them. 

As I read, it seemed to me like the girl was playing the victim.  Now, we all know I love to play the victim, so I could identify with this chick.  But the comfort of familiarity was trumped by how obnoxious she sounded.  She went to a writer’s retreat or extended workshop or something of that nature and her instructor was a dick and her roommate was a snobby bitch and when she found an agent the first guy turned out to be a douche and the second one was a womanizer.  She somehow managed to make a friend during her retreat/workshop but when he offered her constructive criticism, she flipped out and treated him like he was an asshole.  And it was criticism that I even picked up on as I read her first few chapters.

It was her and her book vs. the world and she was pissed off at everyone.

And I thought, "Oh, God, that’s ME."

Throughout the course of my book, I chronicle my encounters with hipsters, douchebags, bitches, sluts, tweakers, and kimono wearing opera singers.  And I talked about how much they, and my classes, sucked.  And to be fair, I talked about how much I sucked as well.  You’d think after reading about that much sucking, the reader would come out a little more satisfied, eh?

I already had a suspicion I should reel back on the reaming of others but after reading the memoir of the most victimized writer in the two universes, I absolutely knew I couldn’t be the male equivalent.  So, I cut out a lot of the negativity in regards to other people and even myself.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of self-loathing (it wouldn’t be Bran’s book without one) but I have definitely scaled back on the bad attitude.

Side note about this woman:  she claimed a lot of large publishing houses praised her work but she was rejected because one place wanted to change too much and another place just felt her book wasn’t the right fit for them.  If she could be praised for her writing, then I certainly could be, too!  She wasn’t a terrible writer but I  was also surprised at the volume of praise she received for what I considered a lot of overinflated descriptions and a penchant for similes and cliches.  I thought I could write just as well as her.  Maybe better.

But she made it seem like her writing was life-changing.  No book is perfect (besides Autumn, amIright Chris?) but she claimed she worked on her book for years until ever word was perfected and there were no misspellings or grammatical errors.  Yet, I found a lot in her memoir.  And I usually don’t notice stuff like that.  Long-term readers of my OD will attest to this, as my diary is full of errors and is an AP English teacher’s wet dream (except for those who refuse to read my writing…bitches).  And I wondered why she didn’t put that kind of dedication into a memoir where she publicly lambasted several individuals who tried to advise her that her writing needed work only to prove them right.

She ended up self-publishing the book, so….there ya go.

I’ve also cut out a lot of repetition.  I used OD as a reference while writing my book and the way I wrote my entries was I often gave a lot of back story and repeated information for new OD readers who had just come upon my diary, allowing them to catch up on the happenings before they dived into a new entry.  But all that extra information doesn’t translate well to a book because it’s one reader, not a slew of people coming and going.  Once I’ve established all the info to that one reader, there’s no need to rehash any of it.  Taking all that excess background noise has helped lighten the book considerably.  Or at least I hope.  I look through all my pages and most of the text is crossed out.  I’ve got at least 89 pages to cut so getting rid of the repetition and cutting out all nonessential information and some of the negativity will help me do that.

I know I keep on droning on about this stupid project and hardly seem like I’m making progress but since it’s my first book, I want it to be as good as it can be.  Plus, I think all the time I’ve sat on it and waited and developed my writing skills has made the book stronger than it’s ever been.  That’s not to say it’s even good at this point but it’s miles ahead of where it was a year ago so I don’t feel bad about not rushing it into publication.

I do want to have it published this year, though.

And free copies to all of you for putting up with my incessant talk about writing this book.